Are Bard students dirtier than a mouse?

It's an ordinary day. You're walking through Kline, wondering if they are serving pie for once. Suddenly the air is split by a shriek! “Is that a mouse?” cries the Kline lady. You look around wildly. There stands a cute Indian boy (my boyfriend, incidentally) with a little mouse peeping out of the coat of his gray hood.

“Its my new pet mouse,” says my boyfriend plaintively. “I named him Tachyon. He goes with me everywhere.”

“No mice allowed in the cafeteria,” says the Kline lady sternly. “Health regulations.”

At home, my boyfriend visits the place where every college student vents their wrath. No, not the ear of a sympathetic bartender-- Facebook. “Health regulations, my shiny metal butt,” he typed furiously. “Most of the people who enter Kline are way dirtier than Tachyon. Bah. Really, what is a mouse going to do to you? Kill you with his furriness? Or maybe gnaw you to death with the same mastication that takes 15 minutes to get through a grain of corn? Bah again.”

So is my boyfriend right? Are Bard students dirtier than a mouse?

What do you mean by “dirty?” The little mouse Tachyon emits feces which can promptly be reabsorbed into Mother Nature. On the other hand, the average American human produces 1600 pounds of trash per year, (not including industrial or commercial trash) according to the Environmental Protection Agency. In case you're bad with visualizing numbers (I know I am) that is roughly the weight of a full-grown female walrus.

By this inescapable logic (despite my daily showers and the quarters I feed the laundry machine) I am, in fact dirtier than a mouse. This is very distressing to me. So what can I do about it????
I can learn to recycle.

But when you think about it, the contest between me and Tachyon is a little unfair. Mother Nature has been practicing recycling for billions of years. In fact, every atom in your body has been recycled millions of times. Yes— the atoms which are now part of you, were once part of Jesus, a carrot, Susan B. Anthony, and a great sperm whale. It's all part of the glorious cycle of life. Human eats apple. Human is killed by swine flu. Nutrients in dead human are broken down by fungi. Apple tree absorbs nutrients. And so on.

But what I call the cycle of life comes to a grinding, screeching, halt, every time we make one of those mysterious substances that nature doesn't know how to break down. Dozens of industrial chemicals, and of course the infamous, ever-present plastic.

Although we all seem to agree that a majestic forest is infinitely more beautiful than a row of cartoon-character adorned cereal boxes, we keep on cutting down said forests to create said cereal boxes, with disturbing regularity. Of course the fungi get their slippery little tendrils over Cap'n Crunch's grinning visage eventually— but at least for now, the cereal boxes are in the lead.

The reason? While Mother Nature knows exactly what to do with Tachyon's cute little feces, humans are still struggling to find ways to efficiently turn their trash into treasure. Start viewing your trash in a new way. Before you throw something in the garbage can, think “How could this object be reused?” Stare deeply into the soul of that plastic bottle. Perhaps it is fated for a nobler destiny than the dump.


For example, trash can be recycled to create art. Bard BERPS have created a series of inspirational sculptures made out of recycled objects to place in their dormitory public spaces. I am especially proud of my fairytale castle, with a tower made from a mini Cheerios box and packing foam. I pay homage to nature's tremendous powers of recycling with a photo of a bee cut from a discarded children's book. Beside the bee is inscribed the motto, “Bees are cute. Bees recycle nectar,” (see photo above.)

In the hands of another talented BERP, the box of an old Star Wars game becomes another inspirational poster. (The Force bids you to RECYCLE! Come to the green side of the Force.) Another sculpture features an old plastic finding Nemo toy, along with the slogan, “Don't FIND Nemo, SAVE him!” And so on. Look around campus. You'll see posters everywhere of people recycling. And of course Barack Obama. Who tells us, “Yes we CAN!”